Offbeat Eats

After leaving Amorosa, an afternoon of hiking took us from the relatively sparse world of coastlines, beaches, and coastal resorts into Viano do Castelo, which is actually a small metro area with a population approaching 100,000. After a few explorations around the area, we had a delightful Portuguese dinner at a small spot called Taberna Cantinho de Viana… which I’m not writing up since I discovered they closed two weeks after my visit. Oh well, that’s the restaurant business. But the next day, we had a shorter coastal hike up to the resort city of Vila Praia de Âncora, a well-known surfing city with a harbor that has a boardwalk-like atmosphere of bars and restaurants that, during the high season, offer outdoor dining. But many of these places are still open in the off-season, including our destination for the evening, Restaurante Fortaleza.

There’s one other annual dining tradition associated with our annual pilgrimage to Lake George’s Tiki Resort for our annual Ohana Luau at the Lake gathering. After the event has wrapped up, and we’ve cleaned up and restored the Tiki Resort to as-found condition, it is traditional for a bunch of us to go down the road to visit a long-time Lake George restaurant, the Log Jam.

At one point last summer, my friend Geoff declared “I’m craving a good steak”. Well, aside from Jesse’s Steakhouse in Hanover, NH, the general Upper Valley region doesn’t have a lot of steakhouses. But in the interest of getting out and about, and trying a few other places, this drew our attention to the other major “Steak House” in the Upper Valley: BlackRock Steakhouse in Springfield, VT.

Both on our outbound trip and returning trip, we tried to get reservations at Marble, which is considered one of the best restaurants in South Africa, and were not able to secure at table. On our last evening in South Africa, however, we got lucky and I managed to secure a 7pm reservation, so we found ourselves heading out to the Keyes Art Mile, a part of Johannesburg’s Rosebank neighbor known as a newer restaurant and gallery district.

Sometimes in our search for truly offbeat locations, Offbeat Eats finds ourselves in some interesting scenarios, like drinking Namibian beer in the back of a bookshop in a suburban shopping mall in Hyde Park, a northern suburb of Johannesburg. How we got here was an interesting story; going with friends to a charity auction for the Upper Valley Humane Society, we ended up winning a bid on a week-long safari at Zulu Nyala in kwaZulu-Natal, scheduled for April 2020. Well, we all know how 2020 turned out. Over the next two years, that trip got delayed a half-dozen times, and then more than a little drama with South Africa (riots in 2021, severe flooding in April 2022), a hotel getting sold and having to rebook, and United Airlines canceling a week’s worth of flights due to jet fuel shortage. These almost led to our May 2022 trip getting canceled. But despite all that drama, we ended up having a smooth 16 hour flight, arriving in the evening in Johannesburg and getting a driver to take us to our Johannesburg-area accommodations at the splendid Hyde Park Guest House and promptly crashing into bed. The next day, after an insightful, but historically sobering, tour of Constitution Hill, we ended up going to a quirky dinner spot that had been recommended by a fellow guest at the Guest House: Olives & Plates.

Our third night in Cancún was another indulgence in the various restaurants available in our All-Inclusive resort package, heading to the sister resort The Royal Islander located near the south end of the Hotel Zone, for a trip to their in-house restaurant, El Conquistador. Much like our visit to Captain’s Cove a few nights before, El Conquistador was a departure from the local Yucatecan places, offering a classic steakhouse experience, with a good wine list, white linens, and a wide variety of steak dishes.

As our vacation drive to Minnesota continued, we headed across western Ohio, Indiana (with stops at both Bare Hands Brewery and the Indiana Dunes State Park) and southeastern Illinois, ending up meeting up with some of our Chicago-area friends for drinks at Brother Chimp Brewing with dinner following at The Turf Room.

Colorado Springs has a lot of the old, classic “Out West” vibe going strong, and one place that really stands out is in the selection of fine dining restaurants: Colorado Springs has quite a few high-end steakhouses right in town: Saltgrass, Mckenzie’s Chop House, Peppertree, and the Famous, just to list ones easily walkable from my hotel. After several long days of work, we decided that it was worth going out and celebrating, and since I had wandered by The Famous a few times, we decided to drop in and give it a try.

(Closed) When we travel around with our friends for our annual “Death March” 20 mile hike, part of the tradition is going out for a big, lavish dinner the night before. In Detroit’s downtown, there are several great places to choose from for this (the automotive- and tech-industry “power dinner” is still a thing here), but I had long wanted to try Roast. I’ve always enjoyed Chef Michael Symon’s Cleveland-area ventures (Lola, Lolita, B-Spot, Mabel’s…), but I’ve wanted to visit Roast since it opened in 2008. At the time, downtown was just a little bit rougher, but starting to a pretty good resurgence, and Roast was a cornerstone of the renovated Book-Cadillac Hotel (now the “Westin Book-Cadillac”). While a bit cumbersome for our large group of 15 (why is it that most places now need contracts for large reservations? Are that many people flaking out in this modern era?), I managed to get a nice reservation of their private State Room for our gathering.

After wrapping up our business activities at the Paris Air Show, we headed into downtown Paris to meet up with our hosts for dinner. Our hosts were staying at a nice hotel in the 6e Arrondissement (we were staying at a Comfort[sic] Inn out by CDG; a word of advise for anyone wanting to do the Paris Air Show: reserve your hotel room months in advance!), which is one of my favorite parts of town (twice before I’ve stayed at the nearby Hotel Quai Voltaire on the banks of the Seine in the 7e Arrondissement for a quite reasonable price, but not during the Air Show). The 6e Arrondissement has a nice selection of cafés, chocolate shops, and even a really good rum bar. As we rendezvoused with our hosts, it was just few minutes before 17:00, so our host recommended we see how the line was for the nearby Le Relais de L’Entrecôte.